On the twelfth day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to you 12 PR blogs, 11 PR tools, 10 PR pros, nine business gifts, eight PR trends, seven professional development opps, six PR conferences, five business books, four online courses, three productivity tools, two lies told about the PR industry, and a phrase to banish forever.
Here we are!
The last day of the series…and we’re going to end it with a bang.
Let’s talk about the 12 PR blogs you should subscribe to (AND READ) in 2017, shall we?
The 12 PR Blogs We Recommend
While most of these are truly PR blogs, I’ve thrown in a few I think every communicator should read next year.
For instance, I really believe artificial intelligence is going to change the PR industry dramatically in the next five years.
That’s why you’ll see the Watson blog on here.
I also believe communicators must read a wide-range of topics, which is why you’ll see moz and Orbit Media on here.
With that, here are the PR blogs we recommend you subscribe to—and read—in 2017.
(In alphabetical order, so as not to play favorites.)
- 6 a.m. This is Richard Edelman’s blog and it’s a good one to subscribe to because he writes maybe three times a month. But when he does, boy, you can be sure your brain will be happy.
- Christopher S. Penn’s blog. When Shel Holtz recommended Penn as a PR pro to follow and said his writings are a must, I nodded my head in vehement agreement. If you subscribe to his blog, you’ll get really smart wisdom and might even get a recipe or two thrown in. He also has a Sunday newsletter that will make your brain explode.
- HubSpot. The HubSpot blog has a specific category for communicators and it’s really good. You’ll find everything from email and content marketing to client satisfaction and productivity tools. I always find a nugget or two in everything I read from them.
- Content Marketing Institute. As someone who likes to contribute to the CMI blog, I know how picky they are—and how rough their editing can be. But that translates to really good content, both from the CMI team and their guest contributors. Of course, it’s all content-related, but you’ll get really smart nuggets of information every day.
- Convince & Convert. Jay Baer bills his blog as a foremost expert on social media, but what you’ll find is much, much more. You’ll get everything from social media and social trends, for sure, but also influencer marketing, customer experience, podcasting, and storytelling.
- IBM Watson. While the Watson blog deals mostly with data—and communicators must get their arms around data—it has some artificial intelligence thrown in. This is a must-read for 2017 as we begin to wrap our brains around how robots are going to replace service businesses very, very soon. Get ahead of the trend now.
- moz. I’m just going to go ahead and admit this blog will make your head hurt. There are weeks where I look at them in my “blogs to read” folder and just can’t. You definitely need a fresh brain and some time to absorb what you’ve learned. But if you do that, I promise you will not only learn a thing or two, you’ll have actionable tasks to expand your knowledge and skills.
- Orbit Media. Not to hurt the feelings of the other writers on the Orbit blog (I mean, I guest blog for them from time-to-time), but I actually find their newsletter—from a PR perspective—far more valuable than their blog. If I had to choose one, I’d subscribe to the newsletter and then add the blog to Feedly.
- PR Newser. This blog from AdWeek is one of my favorites because I LOVE the voice of Patrick Coffee. He’s not writing a ton for them right now, but when he does…boy, oh boy! You can be certain to not only learn a thing or two, but laugh out loud. He’s big into breaking PR news, which is few and far between, but he always gets the scoop.
- Ragan. I personally prefer Ragan to PR Daily, but both are run by the same editorial staff so you can subscribe to one or both. On Ragan, the content is a bit higher-level and, because of that, their community tends to be more professional. They also have lots more original content written by their team. PR Daily syndicates a lot of their content (from us, even!) so it’s a great mish-mash of what’s going on across the entire industry.
- SM Current. Full disclosure: I am an editor for this curated blog so I’m a bit biased. But Laura Petrolino says it gives her a nice station of the nation overview of the changes in social media. And there are a lot…at least one a day. This will help you stay current.
- Spin Sucks. I know, I know. You’re on this blog, reading. So you probably subscribe, right? RIGHT? I know many of you do NOT subscribe and rely, instead, on finding it in your feed or in the Slack community. That needs to change. Pronto! And not for me; for you. Because, in 2017, we are going to be offering subscriber-only content. Which means, if you rely on reading us from your social networks or from Feedly, you’ll miss out on higher-level (and free) content. So go subscribe. Chop, chop!
And there you have it!
Now it’s your turn.
Which PR blogs (or blogs communicators should read) do you recommend?
